Flash Fiction – Excerpt – “Prayers at every Rooftop” – 9/6/2021

“I think, that when I look at the night, I can see something still so mesmerizing of color as the day. I can see nothing missing in detail, never deprived of either vividness nor shape. A flawless form; though, dead with the teardrops that fell, while in desperation, attempting to raise a garden from a small root.”

He wants to keep breathing. Even beyond the final hour, at the length of itself becoming midnight, he wants to keep interpreting the sighs between the varied length of branches in an actual garden. He wants to breathe, while the wind comes gusting in through the open window before him. Not a face. Not a footprint. Not a small detail that is lesser to the great vividness of something he had buried, though keeps still on the surface. Here, he sits, breathes aloud, playing a piano to his mourning.

Love repeats a melody. Plucking his heartstrings in unwanted, though truly desired, pain. He says, in the melancholic notes that are sliding his teardrops off, “She came crashing. As the waves that came to embrace me, though receded. My love was the forest. I kept wanting to water it, though it wanted to burn. It wanted to die with all its leaves, its pine needles, and all its countless ferns.”

Short Prose – 300 Words – “Always, Never Lit” – Romanticism – 12/12/2020

How many tears can I hold, in arms, that do not carry the future? I cannot even carry the present forward, for I hold the blame in me. I hold the scars close, the present watered from my eyes, with the blue seas around my feet. Land is so far away. Same with daylight.

Though, the night?

The realm where each thing becomes so bright, encased by the sheer suddenness of what it represents. A coffin. One plug that was pulled, for a life, that had sung songs from its once-beating heart. An encasement, for a tangle of limbs, yet straightened by the funeral home. A house for open burials, where tears released from cheeks, like leaves from bent boughs. It is Autumn, somewhere, though the night shows chapters of winter.

Brightness, and encased, in that box. What it represents is a thing now unplugged, of a life, lowered into the empty space. A void, or a spot where trees are meant to grow. They still loose their leaves, the same as decay falls from the wilting carcass.

How did she last? How does she still remain? I no longer hold her, nor see the pitiable eyes that stared to me. She faces the dust of an eternity, without. No longer a dream may haunt her, as no more a heart can keep her awake.

I buried what I once threw a vow, forward to. I let go of something that never released. This room disturbs me, what with walls brandished in porcelain darkness. The corners threaten me, scorn me, ridicule the nothingness of me. Is there anything left to berate? A brokenness of damage, with life curtailing about its open volumes. Just chapters left to be remembered, of a fuse stayed to be extinguished.

Short Prose – 450 Words – “A Man’s Love for a Woman” – Romance – 12/3/2020

We cannot look at love as anything other than a mode of stillness. Captivation.

Here, a woman named Lisa breathes, brought down upon a loveseat from her husband, Jonathan, and his hands. He has kissed her forehead, remaining damp to his lips from exertion. A wandering smile, darts from East to West across his mouth, when his gaze steps into her own.

Love does not forget, as it never aims to release, completely. Upon the loveseat, she rests, though in Jonathan’s arms, she remains.

It is a still voyage, where his heart has been dumped overboard as the anchor, from a ship made of gold. Love is that. A stillness. An ocean that remains calm, though by us, can make waves rise towards Heaven encased in a storm. A stillness, though never something to force. It is our emotions that imperfect us, though it is love that makes us realize them in fullness. Love. That which encompasses all emotion, is love, are the words of binding. Of rings that hold the same gold as that ship, so encompassing. The steadiness remains of it, as a surrounding ornament.

It is love that we are blind to, while engrossed in fear. Our realization for who we love, comes upon when we are trapped by them, embraced in arms that do not release, completely.

Beautiful, though abominable, are we, without love. Though, with it, we are understood of each imperfection, disguised over as we did with scars.

Love cannot manipulate, as when Jonathan can see Lisa, has knowledge that he cannot move her limbs of his own accord. When it is that a person can pray for love to move the dead, it proves always fruitless. Love cannot manipulate.

Love cannot raise form, though spirit. Through Jonathan, to his aching wife, Lisa, there is a captured memory of her, always entangled in his mind. Without a need to unbind her from his own cranium, he lives with the thought. For in love, there is no desire for a release, for a complete one. Even of her, whose own limbs have become disarranged by illness, love yet rests.

He loves her. Jonathan loves his wife, and from a simple glance to his face, can be understood of his loyalty to her. Of vows, of a loving heart, of a part to him that will not ever quit, he remains. Beauty for him, of a woman who has not gained a year upon her features, to his eyes, keeps the smile glowing upon these lips. Of his lips, smiling as they are at this moment, is one that cannot melt from neither sigh of grief, nor exhalation of exhaustion. He smiles, because he loves.

Excerpt – “My Anger, the Addiction” – Description to a Woman – 11/20/2020

Beauty is born upon her, with marks to her fields of skin. Imperfections that amount to the truths of this once-wounded woman. Cured by absence, though remains scarred in this man’s heart. Remains treasured more in his mind, than that orb of red. Of memories within bleakest stains, that never fade. They are the shadows. They are all the blows to which he simply tolerates. Of love, to which never reminds him it is fine to hurt. There is something that remains in him, of living sickness that borders upon her haunting appearance.

She could remind any man of something once there, though now not. Of someone to be led to safety, reprimanded for her idealistic and punishing ways. Of someone whose eyes were blank, though now are to be filled with the same security the man has deposited into himself.

For she reminded this man of life. Of its cruelty, of all barbaric minds that nestle within its light. Of shadows that leak through the radiance. She reminded this man of life’s toil, though now to be coursed upon a different direction, from the extended sickness.

Of beauty that descends itself through curl of tress, with plainness of attire. Brown to white, with a former entrance to the hair that runs over an erected neck, with loving smoothness. Brass to the discoloration of a non-pigmented flesh, for she is as pale with death like all fallen birds. Brown hair to pale skin, to plain attire, with of the second mentioning as identical to a dress without design.

What one somber bird she was to him, with a face that startles the sun in him to set, loosening tears over the edges to silenced eyes. He could kiss, as he could drown in her storm. He could draw from her the waters, to consume with gusto that which could not be elsewhere noticed. To beauty’s beyond, of a horizon that had set her light, to shadows that are now limitless.

Curl of tress, to plainness of attire, then to a smile that warps itself as a frozen curve. To remind him of a street that rounds in the winter, born of ice, healing like warmth, though never fades.